>>Hi All,
>>
>>A colleague upgraded Vista Business 32bit to Windows 7 32bit. The machine uses a PCMCIA 3G card for internet access which needs to be manually connected (via software instruction). So when Windows 7 install re-booted then obviously internet connectivity was lost.
>>
>>All went fine and he did log in once properly. After being in Windows 7 for about 10 minutes it re-booted by itself. The laptop rebooted to the login screen. When he now tries to login Windows 7 just says "welcome" and does nothing even after waiting over 3 hours.
>>
>>He can boot and login using safe mode. All content is there, all files, data, etc. But rebooting and trying to log in normally will not work (hangs on welcome screen after typing in password).
>>
>>He is not able to uninstall most apps in order to try and see if one of them is causing the problem since the necessary rights do not exist under safe mode (apparently?).
>>
>>He has tried to login using the Administrator account but the same problem occurs.
>>
>>Any suggestions?
>
>Ultimately, Sergey is right - it's vastly preferable to always do fresh, bare-metal OS installs. But, if you absolutely, positively have to try to salvage this machine there are some things you can try:
>
>- MSConfig lets you control system startup - you can selectively disable services, startup programs etc.
>
>- Simplify the machine - remove any add-in cards (PCMCIA/PC Card etc.), external devices such as printers, USB keyboards and mice etc. so you have only the bare minimum necessary to boot - keyboard, video/monitor and optionally a mouse. You can add hardware back in later. Some hardware - especially USB - requires software to be installed before the hardware is connected
>
>- For devices that can't easily (or at all) be removed, you can temporarily disable them in Device Manager

One thing that could cause a snag if you do an in-place version upgrade of the OS -- the hardare drivers could give you group -- especially if the drivers for the older hardware isn't compatible with newer version of Windows. Got bit with that one back in the Win 3x days where I'd spent a few hours trying to figure out why the upgrade from Win3.0 to 3.1 wasn't hanging -- turned out I needed to switch to the generic VGA driver from the driver that came with the video card (basically the driver made for Win3.0 wasn't compatible with Win3.1 -- so as a result the computer partway through the boot process). Have run across similar issues when "migrating" a windows installation from one motherboard to another (drivers for older motherboard was causing boot issues).